Chapter 190: The Uncontrollable Black Fog
A few days later.
"Natsume bro, we've arrived at Professor Ivy's lab and got the GS Ball!"
On the other end of the line, Ash's excited voice rang out.
"GS Ball…"
Natsume fixed his gaze on the golden Poké Ball in Ash's hand.
"Hello there, Natsume."
A young, full-figured woman in a lab coat appeared behind Ash.
"This is Professor Ivy," Ash said, handing the GS Ball to Professor Ivy.
"Can't you use the Pokémon transfer system?"
Something occurred to Natsume, and he asked.
Seeing him get straight to the point, Ivy swallowed the words she had prepared. She remembered Professor Oak had warned her that his student was rather unconventional.
"No," Ivy said, shaking her head as she walked to the side.
She seemed to pick up Ash's Pokédex, her gait bobbing up and down as she walked. After a moment, she set the Pokédex down, and a Poké Ball transfer device was plainly before Natsume's eyes.
Ivy placed the GS Ball on the device and pressed the button, but it didn't budge.
"See, like this—no response at all." She pushed up her glasses and continued. "This GS Ball is extremely sturdy. My assistants and I have tried many times, and no method can open it. Even the deconstruction machine has no effect, as if it's just a rock."
Ivy said this and handed the GS Ball back to Ash.
"Have you ever considered the possibility that this Poké Ball is literally just a rock?" Natsume's expression turned odd.
If it can't be transferred, then the Mewtwo Ball he reverse-engineered can't be transferred either. Because its internal spatial structure doesn't match the transfer device, this GS Ball might be the same.
But the GS Ball's construction looks modern in every way, so how could it be untransferable? Don't tell me there's another Mewtwo?
"Uh, you're such a kidder," Ivy smiled, saying nothing more.
"All right then, Ash, bring the GS Ball over here, and be careful on the way."
Natsume waved and hung up. He remembered that in the end, nobody ever solved the mystery of this GS Ball. Maybe it really isn't a Poké Ball at all, but some kind of tool? Judging by its physical resistance, that might actually be the case.
Natsume didn't dwell on it further, because he had something more important to do now—figure out what exactly fell into Rotom's body that day.
Inside the laboratory, almost every instrument was wrapped in Natsume's telekinesis. On a huge machine bed up front, an unidentified mechanical object was set in place. From the faintly visible parts and tires inside, it seemed to be a modified car. It was a racing car, a friendly sponsorship from Honora. Its performance should count as top-of-the-line.
"At least in terms of speed," Natsume muttered to himself.
At his side, Rotom hovered in the air.
"Ready, Rotom?" Natsume turned back, staring at Rotom.
"Rotom!" Rotom nodded, focusing all its attention on the modified chassis in front of it.
"Okay, merge."
Natsume felt a little tense, and he pressed his telekinesis hard over the surrounding instruments. For the past two days, he had run the motorbike experiments with Rotom No. 2. Letting Rotom No. 1 try it now was indeed a bit of a gamble.
But Natsume just couldn't find a breakthrough anywhere else. Maybe having Rotom No. 1 attempt it would yield something new. Before this, Natsume had made Rotom No. 1 watch lots of footage from No. 2's experiments and had the two Rotom carefully exchange their takeaways.
Although this was Rotom's first time with this chassis, it handled it with ease and merged in shortly.
"Szzzt—"
Golden light flickered, and the black mass flared all at once like a heart injected with blood. Amid a tooth-grating screech, the black mass—rebuilt from a racing car—shone with gold and began a reverse transformation.
Very soon, a two-meter-tall, agile motor-mech stood up. A streamlined mechanical torso was covered in dark-gold scale-like plating, and golden luminous lines flowed along its joints. Clean joints and sharp-edged armor formed a gale-like stance, like a cheetah coiled to spring.
This time, Natsume had worked out the transformation routing over and over in the inner world, polishing it through trial and error. There would absolutely not be any previous mistakes like "the butt turns into the head" after transforming!
There was a cost, though. For example, the original racing-car mode could no longer be maintained, and it could only present as a cube. Natsume estimated that if he wanted a motorbike mode and a motor-mech mode for motorcycle Rotom in one unit, he would have to spend time himself devising a dual-mode circuit.
As long as it was an off-the-shelf model you could buy on the market, that was almost impossible. Unless Natsume designed a motorcycle from scratch. Just thinking about it made his head ache.
"How does it feel? Tell me if anything feels off," Natsume asked quickly.
"Rotom!" Rotom nodded, indicating all was well, and the instruments were all reading normal.
Seeing this, Natsume let out a breath. At least this time, motorcycle Rotom wasn't spewing a massive outpouring of black fog like before. Even so, Natsume didn't dare relax, and his eyes stayed fixed on the chest of the motorcycle Rotom.
There, a pitch-black energy core was embedded like a black-hole vortex. Natsume remembered clearly that when Rotom No. 2 merged and transformed, the energy core here was golden. This was exactly where Natsume had implanted the AI chip.
Thinking of the black fog that had appeared before, and that sliver of black heart crystal of Divinity, Natsume swallowed.
"Can you feel what's inside there?" Natsume asked Rotom.
"Rotooom—"
Rotom looked down. It had noticed all along that after it merged, this was different from Rotom No. 2. It just couldn't quite make sense of it either. After a long moment, relying on a vague sense, Rotom hesitantly nodded.
"Good. If you can sense it, try releasing the power inside," Natsume said, turning on every recording instrument, his telekinesis fully output and clamping down on them all. "Gently, release it gently—slowly."
Natsume's breathing quickened as he watched the fog seeping from Rotom's chest. The fog was extremely thin and looked gray. At this level, it should be fine…
Blue light flashed in Natsume's eyes, and a special container rose into the air, attempting to collect the gray fog. But Natsume failed, and the gray fog passed straight through the container.
Natsume frowned slightly, compressed his telekinesis into the shape of a jar, and attempted to collect the gray fog again. However, he failed once more. The fog passed cleanly through the compressed telekinetic barrier.
"Rotom, can you try increasing the output a little?"
Natsume figured the concentration might simply be too low, so he took a risk and asked Rotom to raise it a bit.
"Rotom!" Rotom gave a slight shake of its head, seeming a little drained.
"You're saying you can't control it?" Natsume knit his brows. "Could the chip's performance be lacking? But this is already the League's top-tier chip…"
Natsume was baffled. It shouldn't be like this. Even with questions swirling, he still told Rotom to stop for now.
"Maybe it's another reason," Natsume muttered, pacing around the lab.
"What if the issue is that Rotom doesn't have enough computing power to bring out that chip's performance?" a voice suddenly sounded.
"That's it!" Natsume's eyes lit up. "Rotom can merge into circuits and do some simple control, but a chip constantly needs massive data in and out. When it comes to data processing, Rotom isn't good at it!"
It was like a bucket of cold water to the head, and Natsume began excitedly talking to himself.
"Yes. And I think some of the phenomena in the data—like how motorcycle Rotom demands a high spec for transformation circuitry and how control is difficult post-transformation—may also be related to not bringing out the chip's performance," that voice continued.
"You're a genius!" Natsume shouted, hugging a display panel.
Suddenly, he jerked his head down. "Wait a second—who are you?"
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